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US Welfare Reform: The Institutional Dimension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2003

Lawrence M. Mead
Lawrence M. Mead
Affiliation:
New York University E-mail: LMM1@nyu.edu
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Abstract

Making a success of welfare reform has as much to do with implementation as with policy design. The experience in Wisconsin and New York generalises too much of the US, with states divided into those successfully implementing work-based reform, those incapacitated by partisan divisions and those that have never seriously framed welfare policy. Three decisions are key: the degree of toughness, the amount of programme integration; and the locus of administrative control which are shaped by long standing differences in political culture, moralistic, individualistic and traditionalistic. States adopting a moralistic approach to policy administration generally achieve most success.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , April 2003 , pp. 123 - 131
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2003

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Footnotes

A longer version of this paper was first published in 2002 in Focus (20, 1, 39–45) the newsletter of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The author and publisher are grateful for permission to publish.